Shadows on the Floor
by ragtime tune
Summary: That's why this place haunts him, that's why the steady beat of hooves and the scratchy skitter of nails and the loping sound of paws weave through his mind, remnants of decade-old memories. A Remus Lupin character study.


**(Phantom) Shadows on the Floor. **Remus Lupin's first transformation in the Shrieking Shack after fifteen years, taking place in _Prisoner of Azkaban_. A character study.

_Harry Potter _and all related characters and settings belong to J.K. Rowling.

* * *

The passageway is familiar, so much a part of him that he could let his feet go and he would end up in the Shrieking Shack, awaiting another moonrise. It should be a small comfort to him. Instead, it fills him with dread.

All of it is a part of him; the knot in the Willow, the small passageway, the scratched door, the ruined furniture. The Shack has always been cluttered with useless things — it was even before he started destroying it monthly. The room is filled with dust and broken chairs and torn drapery, remnants of transformations he can hardly remember.

Tonight it feels empty.

There should be a smile lurking in the corner, wide and sly. He should hear Peter bumbling through the doorway. James's hand should fall hard on his shoulder to reassure him. There should be four teenage boys in this room, standing at this door, four boys with mischief in their eyes and wands alit. It's not the place for a man, worn and tired, too young for the grey in his hair.

The transformation is particularly difficult, this first night alone in this tired old shack. Pain rips at him; every limb on fire, feeling like his body is being torn apart. Muscle builds on his legs and chest as piercing cries come from his mouth, which morphs into a snout and his last human thought is for all of this to end.

But it doesn't. It never does. Animalistic and feral, he crashes into the walls of the Shack, nose smelling _everything_ outside the doors he meticulously locked, outside this room he's trapped in. The smells and the sounds drive him crazy. He claws at himself, adding new scars to his hands his arms his legs his stomach.

Somewhere in the night, he thinks he hears a dog bark.

The wolf can do what the man can never do: let go. His feelings are simplified, and everything is _easier_. He howls, because he's stricken with grief and he wants desperately for the comforting presence of his pack.

He destroys a table, an antique, ornately carved.

His teeth rip apart a bedspread.

He tears a painting to shreds with his claws.

He remembers nothing when he wakes in the morning, the man again. He knows that if he gets to Madame Pomfrey quickly enough, or to Snape, the scratches on his body wouldn't scar (so badly). But he can't even will himself to move, not even to open his eyes.

Maybe if he doesn't, the last twelve years will be a nightmare. He can imagine James's bespectacled face peering down at him, and Peter's foot prodding him to see if he is awake. There's a small, hopeful part of him, untouched by war and suffering, that thinks his friends will step out of the darkness. Sirius would tell him that it's just a clever sleeping potion.

_No_, he tells himself.

"No," he says aloud, his voice weak and scratchy.

James is dead.

Peter is dead.

Sirius killed both of them.

And that's why he's alone right now, that's why this place haunts him, that's why the steady beat of hooves and the scratchy skitter of nails and the loping sound of paws weave throughout the broken memory of his transformation. None of those sounds could have been heard, but they echo in his mind — and the wolf's mind.

He laughs into the room, sunlight spilling over the floor, at the Sirius in his imagination offering him chocolate. He doesn't think about Sirius offering his best friend to the Dark Lord, and he doesn't think about Sirius on the loose now, running free. He thinks of Sirius holding out a chocolate bar to him and smiling with his eyes lit up, and James ruffling his hair and fixing his glasses, and Peter putting out a hand to help him up.

Maybe this house really is haunted, the ghosts of two hardly-men walking up and down the staircases.

"No," he repeats, shaking his head.


End file.
